A Holiday Gift with Heart: Florida’s Manatee and Sea Turtle Decals

Show your support for conserving Florida’s manatees and sea turtles by giving someone a decal as a holiday gift that will have a lasting effect. It’s easy and affordable. With a $5 donation, you can receive one of the manatee or sea turtle decals shown here and at the same time help protect some of Florida’s most treasured species. The money collected from the decals goes into trust funds that support these imperiled species with research, rescue and management efforts.

This year’s decals celebrate the presence of manatees and sea turtles (los manaties and tortugas marinas) 500 years ago in Florida when Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon landed on this peninsula and named it La Florida, land of flowers. Manatees and sea turtles were among the native wildlife seen by Ponce de Leon and his crew. Ponce de Leon also designated a cluster of islands 70 miles west of Key West as Las Tortugas, because of the many sea turtles nesting there.

As with other Florida beaches, the islands of Dry Tortugas National Park still have loggerhead and green turtles coming back year after year to lay their eggs. Today, the manatee is the state’s designated marine mammal and the loggerhead sea turtle is the state’s saltwater reptile.